Today, the 21st, is the 21st birthday of Huw Elliott, the mysterious nocturnal PR gremlin behind The Trunk. So, naturally, The Trunk decided to sit down with him and ask him a few questions about what it's like working for the best record label ever to be named Bad Elephant Music.
The Trunk: So how did you become the terrifying PR gremlin you are today?
Huw Elliott: Well, hypothetical second Trunk writer who's definitely not me, it was really very simple. I started out just writing press releases as a way to practice writing in a slightly different medium. It was a nice change from the thousands of words of essays I was having to crank out at the time. Very refreshing.
I'd been doing this for a while and then David suggested that I step up and try something a little more regular and scheduled. We were doing our Advent Calendar at the time, the Christmas event where we had a featured track every day of December up until Christmas Day, and I took over the track writeups as a sort of trial period. It worked pretty well, I stuck to it, and, just over a year later, I'm still bloody doing it.
TT: Have you ever found that your music tastes clash with what BEM releases?
HE: I'll admit that I was a little bit worried about that when I started out. I kind of had BEM pegged as a prog label, and, unlike a lot of our audience and most of the rest of the staff, I'm not a devoted prog fan. I do like a lot of progressive music, and I hear plenty of it through David, but my personal tastes lie towards the faster, heavier side of the musical spectrum, and often the more electronic side, too. I'll give almost anything a whirl, but I don't love prog with quite the same passion as I used to.
But that's never been a problem for me because, as far as I'm concerned, BEM isn't really a prog label. I look back over what we released last year, for instance, and there aren't really that many albums I could comfortably call prog without a lot of caveats attached. Some of what we put out is pretty familiar territory for me, but some is in genres I wouldn't really have touched otherwise, and some is hard to pin down into any particular genre. And I really enjoy that. Left to my own devices, I tend to recede into my comfort zone, and it doesn't hurt to be drawn out of it.
Only after extensive preparations can the PR gremlin venture out into the sunlight.
TT: How have things changed since you started out?
HE: Even though we've cut down the number of posts we make per week, I think I'm about as busy as I was when I started out. I'm on a much looser leash than I used to have, in terms of what I can post and some of the ways I can get creative with content - that's how this blog came about, really, as a way to write something slightly longer-form than a Facebook post.
We do release a hell of a lot more than we used to. David mentioned something along these lines in his interview, but we schedule a fair way ahead and we don't usually have long gaps between releases any more. That's a plus for me, of course, because it means I've always got something to write about. I'm rarely stuck for material.
TT: What are you excited for this year?
HE: I've been enjoying what I've heard of Reformat, and their new track has really stoked the flames for me. That kind of heavy, synthy sound pushes a lot of my buttons - I'm an avid gamer and this song in particular would be the perfect theme for an intense boss battle. On a similar note, The Fierce And The Dead have new material this year, and, while I can't reveal too much about that yet, I promise it's well up to the hype. I can't wait for May, when I can finally talk about it properly.
And there's more Shineback to come too. Simon Godfrey is a real wild card in our roster. He's full of curveballs, but they seem to be consistently pretty damn good, and I enjoyed Rise Up Forgotten and Minotaur. The stakes are high, but I'm sure he'll deliver.
TT: Have you struggled with balancing your label commitments with uni work?
HE: I'm actually typing up a history essay with my other hand as we speak. It's pretty intense.
Status Update
It's been a busy week for BEM, with new music videos from both Reformat and The Fierce And The Dead - if you missed those videos, hit the links to watch now! That latter track, 'Truck', will be available on Friday, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, Tonochrome's A Map in Fragments continues to tick down ahead of its release in less than two weeks' time - preorder now to get hold of it as soon as it drops. After the holiday dry season, we're officially back in gear and firing on all cylinders. Brace yourselves.
Review Roundup
Only one review to report this week: Phil Lively at The Progressive Aspect offered us his take on Black Bag Archive Vol. III, and concluded that "the contrast between songs on this album should make for welcome variety". Lovely!
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